Abstract

Keywords

1. Data Description

2. Experimental Design, Materials, and Methods

Ethics Statement

CRediT Author Statement

Declaration of Competing Interest

Acknowledgments

Appendix. Supplementary materials

References

Abstract

Knowledge management is a vital part of disaster preparedness in reducing the disaster impacts. This article presents data based on a field survey of 200 people in East Lombok, Indonesia. The data taken from the survey is presented to examine how the community utilized the knowledge created and transferred during the preparedness phase into actions during the response phase. This article’s data can be served as a starting point to examine knowledge management topics in humanitarian operations literature further and to reveal more novel insights from the survey results. This data-in-brief article accompanies the paper “Knowledge management and natural disaster preparedness: A systematic literature review and a case study of East Lombok, Indonesia” by Ratih Dyah Kusumastuti, A. Arviansyah, N. Nurmala, and Sigit S. Wibowo.

Data Description

The data in this article is the data collected from a field survey using a questionnaire that was developed based on a systematic literature review on knowledge management and disaster preparedness [1,2]. We inquired about the activities practiced before the mid-2018 earthquake and between the mid-2018 earthquake and the early-2019 earthquake. We also elicited the community’s responses during the two earthquakes to define the activities’ impact on the community’s responses during the disasters. Based on the Regional Agency for Disaster Management (BPBD) data, we chose two subdistricts in East Lombok Regency and five villages in each of the selected subdistricts that experienced severe impacts/damages from the earthquakes. We included 100 people from the Sambelia sub-district and 100 people from the Sembalun sub-district for this survey. The respective village heads conducted the respondent selection in each village (as they knew well the villagers’ condition after the earthquakes); 20 respondents were selected. Due to traumatic and sensitive issues, heads of the villages invited the selected respondents to the village meeting areas so that our local enumerators could ask and fill in the survey; hence, all questions were answered by the respondents.

Introduction

We examine the effects of the devastating Christchurch (Canterbury, New Zealand) earthquakes on commercial building prices in an earthquake-prone (but directly unaffected) city, Wellington. Specifically, we examine the effects of the Christchurch earthquakes on Wellington commercial building prices in the presence of regulations and building codes that resulted in some buildings being officially declared as earthquake-prone. Several papers have examined the impacts of natural and industrial disasters on housing markets, both in areas affected by the disaster and in unaffected areas.1 In addition, studies have examined the effects of floods on agricultural properties and houses in flood-prone areas.2 However, there is little or no analysis of the effects of a major natural disaster on the market for commercial buildings, especially those that were not directly affected by the disaster. Our paper, which utilises official records on earthquake-prone buildings coupled with market sales price data, provides the first such study. Our major focus is to examine the post-earthquake price impacts on commercial buildings of a public policy that declares certain buildings to be earthquake-prone, with accompanying requirements on owners to raise the structural integrity of the building. By utilising the timing of official earthquake-prone notices, we can distinguish whether the policy of declaring a building earthquake-prone has a price effect relative to buildings that are not yet declared earthquake-prone but which subsequently receive that status. An earthquake of magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale struck Christchurch on 4 September 2010. An even more damaging aftershock struck the central city on 22 February 2011 killing 185 people. Subsequent aftershocks caused further damage over the next year. The city’s central business district (CBD) remained cordoned off for more than 2 years and approximately 16,000 properties were severely damaged. The Treasury (2013) estimated that total investment associated with the city’s rebuild would amount to around 20% of the country’s GDP. The earthquakes badly damaged many older brick and mortar buildings, many of which were commercial buildings in the CBD. Risk of collapse or severe damage amongst brick and unreinforced masonry buildings in earthquakes had been shown repeatedly in earlier New Zealand earthquakes including the 1848 Marlborough earthquake and the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake, both of which devastated the fledgling city of Wellington. Further major earthquakes within the country (especially the 1929 Murchison earthquake, the 1931 Napier earthquake and the 1942 Wairarapa earthquakes, all of which were between 7.2 and 8.2 on the Richter scale) again exposed the risk posed by brick and unreinforced masonry buildings. Nevertheless, further such buildings were built throughout New Zealand, even in Wellington, a city which had been established both scientifically and through experience as an earthquake-prone city (Thornton 2010). Consistent with the cited literature, we hypothesise that a major earthquake, such as in Christchurch, caused a re-evaluation of the danger posed by earthquake-prone buildings elsewhere, especially in an earthquake-prone city such as Wellington. Given the devastation to commercial buildings in Christchurch, we hypothesise that this re-evaluation will have impacted on prices of earthquake-prone commercial buildings. We test whether public policy intervention by local and central government had an additional effect on commercial building prices through formal declaration of buildings that fell below a certain safety threshold as BEarthquake-Prone Buildings.

مقدمه

ما اثرات زمین لرزه های ویرانگر کرایست چرچ (کانتربوری، نیوزیلند) را بر قیمت ساختمان های تجاری در یک شهر زلزله خیز ( که مستقیما تحت تاثیر زلزله قرار ندارد) به نام ولینگتون بررسی می کنیم. ما به طور خاص، اثرات زمین لرزه های کرایست چرچ بر قیمت ساختمان های تجاری ولینگتون را در حضور مقررات و قوانین ساخت که بعضی از ساختمان ها را به عنوان ساختمان های مستعد زلزله به رسمیت می شناسد، بررسی می کنیم. چندین مقاله تاثیرات بلایای طبیعی و صنعتی را بر بازار مسکن چه در مناطقی که تحت تاثیر فاجعه قرار دارند و چه در مناطق بدون تاثیر آن ، بررسی کرده اند . علاوه بر این مطالعاتی در خصوص تاثیرات سیلاب بر خواص کشاورزی و خانه ها در مناطق مستعد سیل انجام شده است. با این وجود، تحلیل و بررسی بسیار کمی در مورد اثرات یک فاجعه بزرگ طبیعی بر بازار ساختمان های تجاری به خصوص ساختمان هایی که به طور مستقیم تحت تاثیر فاجعه قرار نگرفته اند، انجام گرفته است ( و یا تقریبا هیچگونه بررسی صورت نگرفته است). مقاله ما با استفاده از پرونده های رسمی برای ساختمان های مستعد زلزله ای که دارای اطلاعات قیمت فروش در بازار هستند، اولین مطالعه را در این زمینه فراهم آورده است.

Abstract

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the economic impacts of natural disasters to inform both the modeling of potential future climate damages and climate adaptation policy related to extreme events. It covers papers that estimate the short- and/or long-run economic impacts of weather-related extreme events as well as studies identifying the determinants of the magnitude of those damages (including fatalities). The paper also reviews the small number of empirical papers on the potential extent of adaptation in response to changing extreme events.

Introduction

A growing consensus in the scientific community holds that climate change could be worsening certain natural disasters. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report in early 2012, which notes that climate change could be altering the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and/or timing of many weather-related extreme events (IPCC, 2012). Even nonexperts are perceiving a trend toward more or worse extreme events: a 2012 poll of US residents found that, by a margin of 2:1, people believe that the weather is getting worse, and a large majority believe that climate change contributed to the severity of several recent natural disasters (Leiserowitz et al., 2012).

This paper reviews what we know about the economic impacts of natural disasters to inform both the estimation of potential climate damages using integrated assessment models and the potential extent of climate adaptation to extreme events. The paper limits focus to empirical estimates of the economic costs of natural disasters and findings on the determinants of economic damages and fatalities. The paper then also provides an overview of the handful of empirical papers to date on the likely extent of adaptation in response to changes in extreme events. Given the focus on informing climate scholarship and policy, the paper looks specifically at hydrometeorological (or weatherrelated) disasters and not geophysical disasters, since confidence in the impact of climate change on hydrometeorological events is greater.1 The review is focused on the empirical literature; it does not cover the theoretical literature on the economic impacts of disasters or simulation- and modeling-based studies. The focus of this review is also limited to economic impacts. While natural disasters can have profound social and political impacts (e.g., Lindell and Prater, 2003), those are not covered here.2 Finally, as a further limit to the scope, this review is largely focused on literature published within the past couple of decades, a period during which new data sets and improved understanding of disaster losses has emerged. Recent working papers are included, in addition to peer-reviewed studies.

1.1. Introduction

The past few years have seen a remarkable shift in the acknowledgment of the role of law in the management of disasters. Importantly, the developing field of international disaster law (IDL) has moved from a strong focus on disaster response and relief, towards a more holistic view of the role of law in disaster prevention and management. The field, as is now developing, builds upon and around other areas of (international) law, such as international human rights law (IHRL) (IASC, 2011; Lauta, 2016), international environmental law (Stephens, 2016; Peel and Fisher, 2016), climate change law (Lyster, 2016), and international water law (Phan and Winkler, 2016). Rather than a coherent corpus of law, IDL, in its current form, can be considered an “overarching umbrella”, under which various areas of law are integrated into the context of disaster management (Breau and Samuel, 2016). One of the core challenges for scholars currently working in this multifaceted area of international law is how to account for its fragmented legal foundations, in order to achieve a more comprehensive account of IDL. Although this work is in its infancy, important progress has already been made through academic initiatives (see, especially, Breau and Samuel, 2016; Caron et al., 2014; Lauta, 2015; de Guttry et al., 2012) as well as through the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) International Disaster Law Programme. i Law has for long sought to regulate human-made hazards. Regulations and agreements have arisen within specific fields – such as the the 1986 Convention on Assistance in the Case of Nuclear Accident and Radiological Emergency, the 1990 International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Cooperation, and the 1993 Convention concerning the Prevention of Major Industrial Accidents – in order to prevent and provide accountability for disasters. The focus on human-made hazards is also visible in relation to law regulating humanitarian aid, which has mainly been developed in relation to the context of armed conflicts (see, especially, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949ii), with much less said about relief in the disaster context (the International Relief Union, which was founded in 1927, only took action in two disasters, before it was officially dissolved in 1967. See Macalister-Smith, 1981). In relation to natural hazards, questions around accountability and responsibility become all the more difficult to address, and the law has taken significantly longer to reach this space.

Natural disasters disproportionally affect the poor. It is therefore often assumed that natural disasters increase income inequality. However, as Karim and Noy (2016) point out, there is little research on the impact of natural disasters on income inequality. This paper contributes with a study of Sri Lanka. We study the impact of natural disasters on income inequality in Sri Lanka at district level, as the first study of this nature. We find that natural disasters decrease income inequality among Sri Lankan households. These findings may be somewhat surprising on the face of it as one would expect natural disasters to exacerbate income inequality. However, at subsistence level, people possess little that can be lost to a natural disaster. Losses for the wealthier groups would be disproportionately greater due to natural disasters. People on a monthly wage would not see their income affected by a disaster, but small business owners would. Unskilled day labourers may find new opportunities in the reconstruction effort. Investigating the impact of Cyclone Aila in Sundarbans region in Bangladesh in 2009, Abdullah, Zander, Myers, Stacey, and Garnett (2016) establish that income inequality decreased after the cyclone. Another very recent paper by Feng, Lu, Nolen, and Wang (2016) show that household income fell by 14% due to 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, however, income inequality did not change. Our findings are in line with the results of the aforesaid two studies on Bangladesh and China (Abdullah et al. (2016), Feng et al. (2016)). Our data allow us to decompose income sources, so that we better understand the mechanisms. The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents a background discussion with related existing literature. Section 3 describes data and empirical strategy. Results are discussed in Section 4 followed by Section 5 which contains robustness checks. Section 6 sets out concluding remarks with some policy implications and also recognises the limitations of the study.

2. Background discussion

In the aftermath of a natural catastrophe, it is essential that affected agents should have access to timely and sufficient finances to ensure a smooth and speedy recovery (Keerthiratne & Tol, 2017). Flow of foreign aid that follows a natural disaster plays a key role in the economic recovery process. Enterprises would recover fast when they are provided with additional capital after a natural disaster. Using a randomised experiment where randomly selected enterprises in Sri Lanka were given cash grants after the tsunami, De Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff (2012) present evidence for this. Wealthy individuals are in a better position to meet the financial requirement through self-financing as they can use their savings for reconstruction, they are more likely to have bought insurance to cover any losses, and they have better access to loans and credit. Not only that, the rich are often better prepared for natural disasters as they can financially afford to have precautionary solutions to avoid or mitigate disaster damages. Further, the poor are more likely to have irregular income, so that every disruption, either due to the disaster directly or dealing with the aftermath, means a loss in income. As such, even within the same country, natural disasters would differently affect rich and poor individuals. Natural disasters may thus negatively affect the level of income of the poor leading to a widened income inequality in society.

Disasters have been a part of human experience from earliest times and have been signifi cantly impacting human development and civilization. From a modern scientifi c viewpoint, a disaster is an abrupt event that leads to loss of human lives, properties, resources, or environmental wellbeing, exceeding the capacity of the hazard-bearing body, a term that is used herein to referred to any exposure of human society to a hazard. The following four characteristics are inherent to the above defi nition of disasters. Firstly, disasters are consequent to the presence of human beings and communities as hazard-bearing bodies. There would be no disasters if there were no humans; violent changes and movements have occurred since the beginning of the earth, but did not constitute disasters until the appearance of man. Secondly, disasters are uniquely expressed in terms of losses by human beings and communities. Such losses are not limited to life and property, but also include natural resources and the environment. Thirdly, there is a threshold of the extent of loss due to an event for it to be considered a disaster. In other words, not all losscausing events are considered disasters. For example, the collapse of an ordinary warehouse, everyday car accidents, and robberies may cause losses, but such are not generally categorized as disasters. The loss threshold for categorizing an event as a disaster primarily depends on the capacity of the hazard-bearing body to resist the disastrous event and accommodate the loss. While a car accident may constitute a disaster for a family, it is far from a disaster to the city. Moreover, there are always fortunate individuals or families that remain intact during major earthquakes, which may otherwise constitute devastating disasters to local communities. Hence, the aim of disaster mitigation is not necessarily to eliminate loss entirely, but to decrease the loss below the disaster threshold, which is often a more practical strategy. Finally, the above defi nition of disaster emphasizes the abruptness of the event. Disastrous events are typically abrupt, such as earthquakes, landslides, aviation accidents, and terrorist attacks. However, some disastrous events may occur gradually, such as global warming due to excessive and extended carbon emission, metropolitan smog due to air pollution, and the desertifi cation of a forest or prairie. In contrast to such gradual events, which are to some extent expected and observed during their development, abrupt disasters take place suddenly without effective forecast or prediction. Their durations are short, but they cause signifi cant and often lasting consequences.

THE 2009 DARPA Red Balloon Challenge offered the Internet and social networking a chance to demonstrate their vast potential to solve a distributed, time-critical, highly distributed public problem [1], [2]. And the modern social network study has inferred much new quantitative knowledge about human activity patterns, such as influencer’s identifi- cation [2]–[5], the network topology measurement [6], [7], trust analysis [8]–[10], social hot spot-tracing [11]–[13], and the dynamics of information spread [14]–[16]. However, many applications, from pandemic prediction to earthquake response, require an understanding of how these patterns change when human encounter unfamiliar conditions [17], [18]. Especially for China, who suffered from frequent natural disasters, the understanding of how the behaviors of hundreds of millions of Web users change is very important. The empirical study of the human flesh search (HFS) [19], [20], for one, provided quantitative insights into these collective responses of Web users in China. Inspired by previous research on Web users collective responses, we choose two empirical cases in China-Yi’liang (2012) and Ya’an earthquakes (2013). What makes it additionally useful is that many densely populated areas in mainland China, such as Sichuan, Fujian, and so on, are frequent earthquake areas and often suffered severe damage from earthquakes. At present for earthquake topics, there are two main types of studies: detecting seismic waves and enhancing rescue efforts. The former focuses on how to improve the accuracy of magnitude of earthquake forecasting or issue warnings as early as possible [21]–[24], such as the Did You Feel It system. And the later studies [25]–[27] try to explore ideas to cope with earthquake relief, postearthquake reconstruction, and to improve the mental health status of rescuers. This paper focuses on the latter effort from a social network perspective, with a particular focus on information diffusion and social networking behaviors.